Both light weights with restricted blood flow and heavy weights help build strength pretty well in healthy adults — the numbers show clear benefits for both.

If you're new to lifting weights, heavy lifting makes you stronger faster than light lifting with blood flow restriction, but both methods build muscle about the same.

Squeezing the blood flow while lifting light weights seems to build just as much strength as lifting heavy weights, at least for healthy adults from their 20s to 80s.

Doing light weights with restricted blood flow seems to build leg muscles about as well as lifting heavy weights, based on what researchers have found so far.

People who already lift weights regularly get stronger and build more muscle from low-weight exercises with blood flow restriction than from heavy lifting, making BFR-RT a powerful tool for advanced athletes.

Lifting heavy weights and doing lighter exercises with restricted blood flow both make your muscles grow bigger about the same amount, even though they work in slightly different ways inside the muscle.